1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vacuum cleaner, and more particularly, to a suction nozzle of the vacuum cleaner that provides improved suction efficiency. Further, the present invention relates to a suction nozzle structure of an upright vacuum cleaner that can improve suction efficiency of foreign particles under the condition of the same suction amount by efficiently sucking the foreign particles.
2. Description of the Related Art
A vacuum cleaner is generally classified into a canister vacuum cleaner and an upright vacuum cleaner. Particularly, the upright vacuum cleaner includes a main body, a nozzle unit and a handle that are integrally formed, so the vacuum cleaner itself is moved when a user pushes or pulls a handle with gripping it. At this time, dusts on the floor are sucked through the nozzle to clean the floor. A general configuration of such an upright vacuum cleaner is already well known in many documents.
Meanwhile, the upright vacuum cleaner has a limitation in cleaning the whole indoor space due to its own shape. In more detail, since the upright vacuum cleaner has the main body, the main nozzle unit and the handle integrated and the whole vacuum cleaner moves at the same time during the cleaning process, it has many restrictions in view of space to be cleaned. For example, the main nozzle of the upright vacuum cleaner cannot reach a corner or an edge of such as a stairway, the corner or edge cannot be cleaned. In order to solve this problem, there had been proposed an upright vacuum cleaner in which only a hose may be separated from the suction nozzle body and then a mini nozzle is connected to an end of the separated hose. That is to say, with the main body of the upright vacuum cleaner being placed at its original position, the mini nozzle is connected to the end of the suction hose and a user cleans corners and edges with moving only the mini nozzle.
Meanwhile, the mini nozzle has a small size, which results in a low suction efficiency of air. Thus, in order to completely absorb foreign particles attached on a bottom surface, the mini nozzle requires an essential use of an agitator. The agitator provides an advantage that the foreign particles on the bottom surface are completely scratched off and are sucked. However, when there occurs a phenomenon that the sucked air hovers about the agitator together with the foreign particles, the suction efficiency of the foreign particles is lowered. In other words, the foreign particles may rotate along with a flow of air rotating around the agitator or the foreign particles hovering together with air may be again exhausted to an outside through the suction hole. In such a circumstance, the cleaning efficiency is lowered, which is not preferable.
Also, if the foreign particles are not guided in an exact direction inside the mini nozzle, the foreign particles are stacked, which results in frequent cleaning of the inside of the mini nozzle.